The Louvre and its famous glass pyramid entrance in Paris, France. pichetw/Shutterstock

Museums are houses for beautiful and historically significant objects, so it's only fitting that the building itself be gorgeous.

They can be fascinating design challenges. How do you design something like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which embodies human civilization's artwork? And how do you make something like the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which holds the remaining history of a people nearly wiped out by genocide?

The most beautiful museums in the world can be radical experiments in architecture, beautiful entries into old traditions, or just plain weird. All of them are works of art themselves.

Here are 36 standouts.

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One of the buildings in China's Forbidden City is the Palace Museum. It's a gorgeous wooden structure, and one of the most-visited museums in the world.

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The Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain is one of Frank Gehry's most ambitious works.

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London's Natural History Museum has cavernous, well-lit halls to illuminate its exhibits.